soviet78
Resident Soviet
Joined: Thu 07 Oct 2004, 14:04
Posts: 2352
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 Posted: Thu 22 Jul 2010, 06:55
My family on the mother's side were mostly farmers working for Sovhozes in Siberia. Some anecdotal points:
* It's a myth that farmers working for the state didn't put as much work or effort in. My grandmother was up and working from sun up to sun down for the farm (with a break of a few hours in the afternoon).
* Grandmother's home had a small plot of land and a couple of barns, and we had chickens, a couple goats and a cow. Most of the food was for personal consumption, although occassionally grandma would go out to the city to sell some fresh produce, milk and eggs in the public market. Her children had to take care of this personal plot most of the time, as she was busy working for the farm.
* Life in grandmother's village was poor. She didn't have a telephone. She had running water in her house but only cold water (to warm it up she had to boil it, and for bathing she had a banya in her backyard). The village store had only very basic things in it, like bread, sugar, salt, etc. All the roads in the village were just dirt.
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One of the problems of rural life in the USSR was that there were so many small communities spread throughout the country. This was made worse with many young people moving to cities over generations, leaving many villages dilapidated. In the 1970s and 80s, the state made plans to close down many of the poorest and most isolated villages and to consolidate the population into larger towns with most of the amenities of cities. This was contested, both by local inhabitants and by intellectuals arguing that the village as it was was an important part of Russian culture. In the case of the villagers, their complaints were based mostly on certain oversights or insensitivities the planners had for the new communities, such as the lack of space for private gardening, bland apartment blocks, etc.
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Yeah, Belarus has maintained a large number of state and collective farms. I recall reading that they have moved ahead with the Soviet era plans to consolidate some village communities. I haven't kept up on how that's turning out for them. One thing's for sure: They've proven that state and collective farms can work competitively (for example, their competitiveness with Russian milk producers is what led to the 'milk wars' between Russia and Belarus last year). While Russian and Ukrainian farms are growing fallow or being bought up by British, Dutch and German farmers, Belarusians are still farming their own land. Also, unlike the rest of the former USSR, they are still far less likely to use genetic modification, which makes Belarusian products popular in Russia and Ukraine.
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